32.209.219.223

October 2018

Hello, I'm Sampayu. I noticed that you made one or more changes to an article, Dentistry, but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so! If you need guidance on referencing, please see the referencing for beginners tutorial, or if you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page. For more info about Wikipedia's policy about verifiability, take a look at WP:VER. ►Sampayu 05:41, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

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Dentistry edit

General rule of thumb: before adding any content to Wikipedia, first read (and get familiarized with) WP:POL. By doing so, you'll avoid feeling angry and frustrated.►Sampayu 07:04, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

You go to my talk page and write text as if I'm the author and owner of the entire article but I'm neither one nor the other.

If you're not willing to familiarize yourself with Wikipedia's policies and follow them, then you're not really adhering to the Wikipedia project.►Sampayu 08:05, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

There are so many "zillion" flaws in the line of thought that you published in my talk page (all caused by your lack of knowledge about how Wikipedia works) that I wouldn't even know where to begin to explain each flaw one by one. By the way: marking an uncited statement in an article with the citation needed template is correct, hence I don't understand why you told me that you did it as if I was somehow going to feel angry(?) about you doing the right thing.►Sampayu 08:19, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Here are some flaws in your line of thought:

• I'm a US dental student: first of all, you can state whatever you want to state, this doesn't make it necessarily true. You can either be an actual dental student or not, how can I be sure and how can anybody else be sure? Second, you could be a Nobel prize winner and still it would be necessary that you cited reliable source(s) supporting your edit.
• The information you have now is factually incorrect: "factual knowledge" is acquired either by experiencing the fact or witnessing it. The problem is: it's an individual (thus subjective) experience. Converting your "factual knowledge" into text doesn't make such text an authoritative/trustworthy piece of information for other people (those who read your text) because other people didn't experience (neither witnessed) the facts that you experienced and/or witnessed, hence they can't be sure about your factual knowledge being actually factual or not.
• Anesthesia requires special licensing, but US DDS and DMD grads are authorized to perform all dental procedures and surgeries. Few will perform advanced procedures like a BSSO or Lefort I osteotomy, but they are still legally authorized: according with Wikipedia's policies, you are required to cite at least one reliable (trustworthy + authoritative) and verifiable source that supports such statement. As previously explained, it doesn't matter if such statement is based on your factual knowledge, you're still required to follow Wikipedia's policies. It's not my opinion here, it's the community's opinion. Those editing Wikipedia's content are expected to abide the community's policies.
• As for implants requiring postdoc training, that's so far off, it's a bit embarrassing to have in a wikipedia article: a lot of low quality and unreferenced content was added to such article before I started watching (monitoring) it. Because I'm not a dentistry professional, I'm unable to "recycle" the article in order to fix all of its issues: what I can do is to monitor the article so it won't suffer any further damage. Those who abide to Wikipedia's policies and have enough knowledge in dentistry can gradually fix and improve the article while I watch it. It's that simple.
• As for citations, citing the legal standing on this would be akin to citing the fact that dentists can prescribe schedule 2 narcotics across the US: I didn't require you to cite legislation, you're only required to add supporting sources (not necessarily legislation). Such source can be e.g. a book, if such book e.g. states that, overall, the US legislation supports your statement.
• Everyone in the industry knows this is the case: which means that no one "in the industry" will come to Wikipedia to read that statement. Those who will come to Wikipedia to read the article will be precisely those who are not "in the industry". Hence, you need to provide reliable and verifiable sources that support your statements to the lay public that reads such article.
• I'd have to dig through 50 different state statutes to demonstrate it to you: you're not required to demonstrate it to me. I do not own Wikipedia. You need to "demonstrate it" to the general public reading the article, and you do that by citing reliable and verifiable supporting sources.
• I don't have time for that: you found time to edit the article but you don't have time to inform yourself about the rules of this project, including the rules about editing articles. Interesting.
• I have 500 pages of medical texts to get through this week, but I figured I'd help out with what is common industry knowledge: if I were you I would leave Wikipedia aside and prioritize my studies. I salute your good intentions but good intentions alone won't suffice: along with your good intentions you're also required to follow the rules (policies and guidelines) stablished by this community. Here, we're required to think collectively and socially, Wikipedia is a collaborative (thus "societal") project.
• No, I don't have time to read a full set of wikipedia policies: hence, you don't have time to get actually involved with this project, which means your edits will most likely cause more harm (e.g. adding uncited content) than good.
• I'm happy to work within the rules, but I was merely replacing one un-cited claim with another (accurate) one: this is a reasonable argument, but as I mentioned above the errors from the past cannot be used to justify new errors (adding uncited content, even if it's uncited content replacing uncited content). You would be just replacing one unsupported claim/statement by another unsupported claim/statement.
• I'm trying to help you: if you really wanna help me, send money to my Paypal account. I won't make a dime if you improve the quality of the article.
• If you want to continue contributing to the misinformation, that's your prerogative: it's not my prerrogative, I'm not authorized by this project to contribute to misinformation and you're not authorized by this project to contribute with uncited content.
• I don't have your amount of free time, so you'll win the edit squabble: I'm not trying to win anything. This is not a dispute.
• But as a wikipedia hobbyist, I would hope that your primary interest would be in accuracy: accuracy isn't the only "value" we require, here. Trustworthiness and verifiability are some of the other ones that are equally required.
• There we go - I've requested citation on the current claim: well done. I agree with what you did.
• You don't understand the premise - that's fine. You are arbitrarily privileging one un-cited claim over another simply because it was there first: it's not that simple. If you read my previous comments I believe that you're smart enough to understand why I'm unable to fix the errors from the past so the best I can do is to monitor the article so such errors will eventually be fixed the proper way (i.e., following Wikipedia's rules) by someone who has all the necessary skills to do it and follow such rules.
• This is a variation of the logical fallacy known as the appeal to tradition. Exchanging one un-cited claim for another un-cited claim does nothing: I stopped the citation at the word nothing. I did it on purpose. :)
• Secondly, I already explained why it would be near-impossible to provide a satisfying citation to my claim (there is no single repository for the legal status of dental procedures in all 50 states), but you didn't seem to understand that, either: actually, if I were a dental student or a dentistry professional with enough free time in my hands (contrary to what you think, I work and study, I have little free time), inside that article I would create a section specifically about dentistry in the United States and then I would create subsections discussing each state's legislation about dentistry.

Hopefully, your device's IP is either static or hasn't yet been modified and you'll thus find this long text, read it, understand it and expand your level of understanding about Wikipedia.►Sampayu 13:43, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

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